Hardware upgrade advice required

My PC has ECS - H61H2-M2 motherboard. It has 8GB DDR3 RAM. The processor is i3-2100 @3.10 GHz. The graphics card is NVIDIA GeForce GT 730 of 2GB capacity. The power supply is 450W. The motherboard, processor, one stick of 4GB DD3 RAM, power supply were bought in 2011 or 2012. The second 4GB stick of RAM was bought in 2017. I am using Windows 10 pro 64 bit.

The CPU cabinet was bought in 2005 or 2006. I do architectural work which involves making 3D models of buildings in SketchUp and still image photorealistic rendering in V-Ray.
I also do photo editing work in Photoshop and use layout and graphics software viz. Adobe InDesign and Adobe Photoshop. I do occasional video editing that consists mostly of slide shows and the videos are of 4-5 minute duration in Adobe Premiere.

I am planning to buy a new i7 processor or AMD Ryzen 7. I want to keep 8GB RAM or maybe I will upgrade to 12 GB RAM.

I have the following queries.
1. Which processor should I buy from the following ?
Intel Core i7-7700 Processor 8M Cache, Up To 3.60 GHz 7th Generation which will cost me 24,596 bucks
Amazon.in: Buy Intel Core i7-7700 Processor 8M Cache, Up To 3.60 GHz 7th Generation Online at Low Prices in India | Intel Reviews Ratings

AMD RYZEN 7 SERIES OCTA CORE PROCESSOR 1700 for 25,088 bucks. Not much of a price difference between the two processors
https://www.amazon.in/AMD-RYZEN-OCTA...ywords=ryzen+7

Would I require any additional cooling for AMD Ryzen processor as the amazon web page mentions “WITH WRAITH SPIRE COOLING SOLUTION (AM4 SOCKET)”

2. Should I upgrade my graphics card also? The current graphics card that I have i.e. NVIDIA GeForce GT 730 of 2GB capacity was bought in 2017 only.


3. Should I buy a new power supply? I recently faced a hard disk trouble (WD hard disk bought in 2012) in which the pins of hard drive got blackened out that rendered it useless.

4. A friend of mine is suggesting to buy a new i5 processor or AMD Ryzen equivalent instead and buy a heavier better graphic card.

His point is to invest more money in graphic card in order to get better performance instead of sticking to a low end graphics card and pumping money in a high end processor. Is that true?


I am attaching screenshots of my hardware specs, the photographs of power supply and damaged hard drive.

archz2 said:

2. Should I upgrade my graphics card also? The current graphics card that I have i.e. NVIDIA GeForce GT 730 of 2GB capacity was bought in 2017 only.

Is the card sufficient for your current workload? What are you planning to do with this machine? If you're not gaming and it's working fine for your 3D modeling then I don't see any reason to upgrade.

archz2 said:

3. Should I buy a new power supply? I recently faced a hard disk trouble (WD hard disk bought in 2012) in which the pins of hard drive got blackened out that rendered it useless.

I would get a new one. Aside from potential damage, that thing looks ancient so it's efficiency is probably very poor. It also has very low 12V current, which your CPU and graphics cards use.

archz2 said:

4. A friend of mine is suggesting to buy a new i5 processor or AMD Ryzen equivalent instead and buy a heavier better graphic card.

His point is to invest more money in graphic card in order to get better performance instead of sticking to a low end graphics card and pumping money in a high end processor. Is that true?.

Is your workload more CPU-heavy or GPU-heavy? What is your budget? That would determine whether you need the extra CPU performance or the extra graphics performance.

Regardless of what CPU you get, you need a new motherboard and RAM. So this is basically going to be a completely new machine, except possibly your case and hard drives.

To re-iterate from post #2:

Neither CPU will work with your present motherboard.

Both CPUs will require DDR4 memory. (In principle, the I7-7700 would work with DDR3, but a quick search doesn't find any motherboards that use it and DDR3.)

Your motherboard has a PCI-E X16 3 graphics slot, so it can accept most recent graphics cards. Some software can use the graphics processor to crunch numbers, much faster than the CPU, but I don't know whether any of the software that you list can do that, If not, upgrading the graphics cards will mostly help with 3D games. Some of the more powerful garphics cards require additional PCI-E power connectors. Does your PSU have them? (I'd guess not.)

If you wanted to stay with the same motherboard, it is compatible with an I7-3770 (Ivy Bridge) CPU. You may be disappointed by its price; it's an end-of life CPU (from 2012), which means that it'll be more expensive than a current model.

I agree that you ought to wait and do a total system upgrade. Your hardware is too old to make doing it incrementally a cost-effective path.

PolarNettles said:

Is the card sufficient for your current workload? What are you planning to do with this machine? If you're not gaming and it's working fine for your 3D modeling then I don't see any reason to upgrade.

While running multiple software simultaneously viz Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign, I often experience lag and the software getting stuck for like 10-12 seconds. I intend to run all the software and perform all the tasks that I have already listed which are architectural 3d graphics modelling, photo editing and layout design. I do architectural work which involves making 3D models of buildings in SketchUp and still image photorealistic rendering in V-Ray.
I also do photo editing work in Photoshop and use layout and graphics software viz. Adobe InDesign and Adobe Photoshop. I do occasional video editing that consists mostly of slide shows and the videos are of 4-5 minute duration in Adobe Premiere. I intend to do this kind of work only in the future. I will never play any game on my desktop. I have a 21.5” inch full HD LED display Dell monitor.

PolarNettles said:

I would get a new one. Aside from potential damage, that thing looks ancient so it's efficiency is probably very poor. It also has very low 12V current, which your CPU and graphics cards use.

There are lots of currents listed for different voltages in my photograph. Should only the 12V current be checked in order to judge the performance of the power supply unit?

PolarNettles said:

Is your workload more CPU-heavy or GPU-heavy? What is your budget? That would determine whether you need the extra CPU performance or the extra graphics performance.

Regardless of what CPU you get, you need a new motherboard and RAM. So this is basically going to be a completely new machine, except possibly your case and hard drives.

As already described I don’t do any gaming. I don’t know whether the software I have listed are GPU heavy or CPU heavy. I guess since they involve CAD modelling, image editing, so they must be GPU heavy. I am not sure about this. My budget is 40,000 bucks.

Moreover, how can I determine the combination of CPU and GPU that won't result in CPU bottlenecks? This will help me in buying better hardware

archz2 said:

There are lots of currents listed for different voltages in my photograph. Should only the 12V current be checked in order to judge the performance of the power supply unit?

For modern systems the biggest power consumers - the CPU and GPU - mainly use the 12V rail. So unless you have more than 15 hard drives or something else pulling a lot of power off the 5V line, 12V is generally the most important value to look at. That said, your GT 730 uses so little power (23W) that it doesn't really matter.

For example, a decent modern 450W PSU:

archz2 said:

As already described I don’t do any gaming. I don’t know whether the software I have listed are GPU heavy or CPU heavy. I guess since they involve CAD modelling, image editing, so they must be GPU heavy. I am not sure about this. My budget is 40,000 bucks.

I am unfamiliar with those programs so I'll let others who have more knowledge about them to comment on how GPU-heavy they are.